Tips and Tricks

The honey massage

2008-07-23T00:59:00.000-07:00

Honey massage is type of soft tissue massage that has beneficial healing properties to the body. Besides water and carbohydrates, there are essential micro elements, minerals, enzymes and antibiotics. When eaten those beneficial nutrients are being partly destroyed by the hydrochloric stomach acid, but when applied to the skin they are fully absorbed.

Preparation
First make sure that you are not allergic to honey and try to get a liquid non-crystallized honey from a local herbal shop.

Technique
Pour honey all over the area that will be massaged. Then try to “unglue” your hands from the area by palm clapping and rubbing motions. Continue until all the honey disappears. If you’ve been doing it right then white-gray skin pallets will form. This indicates that the years accumulated harmful toxins held under the skin are being removed effectively.
When you finish wash the skin with sponge and warm water. The healing effects can be felt immediately. Be warned that the skin will remain red for a short time right after the treatment and initially may hurt, but after a couple of sessions it will adapt. For effective cellulite removal you’ll need at least 15 such sessions.
Duration: 30 minutes to 90 minutes

Benefits:
- cleans moisturizes and nourishes the skin
- removes salts and toxins
- relaxes the nervous system
- improves blood circulation, metabolism
- increases the lymphatic system flow
- Anti-cellulite
- frees from intellectual and physical chronic exhaustion
- increases immunity and the ability of the organism to purify itself

Additionally
You can pour a few drops of lemon, orange, tangerine, juniper or lavender oil to the honey. If you prefer to use a couple of oils first you’ll need to mix them and add the honey afterwards.

2 column blogger template - simple white

2008-07-22T01:19:00.001-07:00

I've made a a clean white 2 column template for Blogger. Here are some of its features:
- allows AdSense integration
- Sitemap
- optimized, not causing duplicate content
- legible fonts with proper contrast

preview:

How to install it:
1. Open Blogger Dashboard 2.Goto Layout -> Edit Html
Backup your old template by pressing the Download Full Template link.
2. Download and save the new template from here. Then press the button Browse, load it in the 'Upload a template from a file on your hard drive' field and press Upload.
3. Next check Expand Widget Templates and change all "yourwebsite.com" items corresponding to your blog address.
3. Congratulations. Now you can see and use your new template!

If you have any further questions please ask them via the contact form.

How to do an easy windows reinstall

2008-07-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

Next are few simple steps on how to complete a fresh windows installation.
Time: from 15 to 45 minutes depending on your computer speed.

1. Provide yourself with Windows CD .
2. Enter BIOS (immediately after restart press several times ESC, F1 or DEL keys). Search all the menus and find First Boot Device, Boot loader or Boot sequence. Change the settings so that your CD to be on first position and the other devices to follow. Exit BIOS saving the changes.
3. If succeeded you'll see the following message: "Press any key to boot from CD..." Press any key to begin loading from the CD drive.
4. Next press consecutively ENTER, F8, ESC. A menu will show to choose where do you want to install your new Windows (if the drive is partitioned you'll see C: and D:) Choose a preferred destination and press ENTER.
5. If you want to save the current information on your drive choose: "Leave the current file system intact (no change)" and press ENTER. Otherwise choose "Format the partition using the NTFS file system", ENTER and press F.
6. Unless you want to set the country, time and date settings press NEXT 3 times.
7. Happy new Windows installation!

Laptop users
Sometimes problems appear when the Windows installation could not recognize the laptop's hard drive. Here is a solution to that: after restart open Bios setup with continuously holding the keys F1, F2, F10, Esc or Del to access BIOS settings. Then go to System Configuration and Disable the SATA Native Mode. Save the changes and restart again. Then you could normally continue you Windows installation. For more information on the subject please read:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00758841&dlc=en&lc=en&cc=us

When problems appear
If you sill experience problems i.e. the new installation fails to start or hangs, that indicates a conflict between your installed software or drivers and the Windows version. In such case enter in Safe Mode and run Start->Run->msconfig. Look through the startup programs and remove the unneeded. Restart. If windows still hangs again in Safe mode from Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device Manager delete the installed drives and hardware devices one by one. The reason behind this is that some new Windows versions are incompatible with older device drivers. When you succeed go to the device manufacturer's website and download appropriate drivers that will work without problems.

Protect Windows after installation

2008-06-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

I'll present you Xpy
http://xpy.whyeye.org/download/ a free Sourceforge project that closes standard security holes found in every fresh Windows installation that could be exploited by hackers or spyware.
It works by automatically disabling unneeded services, hardening your system security settings. This way you'll enjoy improved privacy settings. Next to every action suggested by the program you'll find usable description of the threat that will be fixed.
Though this software might increase your system performance altering the standard windows components communication with microsoft server, try it carefully.

Create website gradients with CSS

2008-05-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

In this post I'll show you an easy technique that can save you lots of time when you want to use gradients in your website.
Here is an example:

This has been produced by the following code:

<span class="one"></span>
<span class="two"></span>
<span class="three"></span>
<span class="four"></span>
<span class="five"></span>

<style>
.one, .two, .three, .four, .five { float:right; width:10%; height:80px;line-height:80px; }
.two {background:#D2E4F6; }
.one {background:#FFFFFF; }
.three {background:#A5C9ED; }
.four {background:#78ADE5; }
.five {background:#4B92DC; }
</style>

And the next one:

<style>
span {
height:10px;display:block;
.g1 {background-color:rgb(255,105,105);}
.g2 {background-color:rgb(255,125,125);}
.g3 {background-color:rgb(255,145,145);}
.g4 {background-color:rgb(255,165,165);}
.g5 {background-color:rgb(255,185,185);}
.g6 {background-color:rgb(255,205,205);}
.g7 {background-color:rgb(255,225,225);}
}
</style>

<span class="g1">>/span>
<span class="g2"></span>
<span class="g3"></span>
<span class="g4"></span>
<span class="g5"></span>
<span class="g6"></span>
<span class="g7"></span>

You can adjust the height of the gradient bar altering the CSS height property. The lower height value will give you smoother gradient.
Cheers!

Restore Show Desktop on taskbar

2008-04-11T00:04:00.000-07:00

It's a common issue when you are dealing with spyware or other software unistallation on Windows XP your favorite Show Desktop icon to disappear from taskbar. Here is one relatively simple way how you can restore this useful icon:
1. Create file named: Show Desktop.scf
2. Open notepad and paste this content:

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

3. Save the file
4. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
5. Paste the file there.

That's it enjoy!

3 ways to increase CPC and eCPM

2008-03-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

There are some things that anyone could do to increase his/her incomes when using Adsense.
Here is the list:

1. Changing ads
Check your Adsense statistics. If you're having low CPC(cost per click) then you should move your ad above the fold and/or change its color scheme. Experiment until there's a positive effect.

2. Try decreasing your ad units
The reasons:

- the second and third ad spot clicks are not so-profitable as the first ones. And if you have higher CPC on your middle ad then place it to appear first in your HTML code, then position with CSS to the place where it's getting maximum clicks.

- when having 25 ad links on a page and the user clicks on only 1 then your eCPM will start to get low, because this way the advert impressions are growing but the clicks are staying same.

3. Add more useful content to the webpage
You can use Google Analytics or other web statistics software to see the average stay time on your webpages. This way you might find the pages that need to be enriched or rewritten. And if you manage to increase visitors stay time then your eCPM will surely grow!

Cheers!

New tool to test your website content

2008-02-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

As I noted previously in Deoptimizing - a new way of seo keyword density is an important factor if you're serious in SEO. Once when you have a great kind of content, the crucial part is to be able to present it infront of the right public.
And by having keyword density above the threshold of 2 - 4% will put your content into the famous Supplemental index.
The result: it won't compete/show with other websites in SERPS.

In order to prevent that from happening I wrote down a simple keyword density analyser. You can check it out and I hope it'll help you in finding the ideal keyword density percentage. Any comments and suggestions are welcomed.
Cheers!

Free light antivirus for personal use

2008-02-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

This time I'll present you RemoveIT Pro - free antivirus program for personal use.

Here is a summary of its features:
* locates & removes many new dangerous Spyware, Malware, Viruses,
Worms, Trojans and Adware that other popular AV programs do not find
* sufficient updates
* small size
* runs on Windows XP and VISTA
* quarantines bad files
* fast scanning

Download it from here:

http://www.incodesolutions.com/downloads/removeit_pro.exe

After the installation just press over the Scan for viruses button and wait.

Dealing with rogue spyware

2008-01-23T21:53:00.000-08:00

My friend's got infected with some rogue spyware that insisted on him to buy an antivirus program for ~50$. The pest constantly stayed at bottom of his taskbar saying: warning your computer is infected, please buy this program.

I've seen this type of virus before and started my favorite free antivirus pack: Spyware Terminator, then MWAV/Kaspersky/, then CureIt/Dr.Web/ and Ewido/AVG/. During the scan in windows safe mode CureIt recognized a few files(variants) but even after their removal the virus stayed on the computer. From the commercial antivirus solutions that I've tried Sunbelt Counterspy detected the trojan properly:

Trojan-Downloader.Zlob.Media-Codec
a variant of SpyAxe/SmithFraud/SpywareQuake

My friend got worried and after some research on Internet I've found the Smithfraud fix tool:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/files/smitfraudfix.php
http://siri.urz.free.fr/Fix/SmitfraudFix.exe

The procedure that cleaned up the computer was pretty straightforward:
1. Turn off the Windows System Restore
2. Reboot under safe mode and run the SmithFraudFix.
3. Press 2 from the options and the virus will be cured.
The application restarts the explorer shell, kills the trojan process, and then deletes the specific virus files.

Update: One week later during active browsing the computer got infected again. This time when someone tried to open a folder in Windows Explorer the annoying alertbox popped up saying: You have a virus and you must download an antivirus application.
At least the virus name was known as 'Files secure' having an entry in Add/Remove programs. But the uninstaller's 'Next' button was disabled, so it couldn't be removed. The above described 3 step procedure again fixed the problem.

Hope this will help you!

Speeding up website in 14 easy steps

2008-01-15T02:02:00.000-08:00

I would like to share with you an excellent video presentation on optimizing websites. It shows the actual optimisation process for huge websites done via simple 14 steps. You could take them into account and optimize your website loading time. In a summary they are:

1. Reduce the HTTP Requests - use Firebug Extension for Firefox, goto Net tab and see if you can merge your .css, .js files and use sprites for images.
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header to skip the loading time of an already saved offline content from Internet:

<?
header("Expires: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time()+315360000)." GMT");
?>

4. Add Gzip Compression to reduce webpage size send to browser. I've managed to get 50% faster pages by using this method in PHP:

<?
ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
/* your webpage code */
ob_end_flush();
?>

5. Put Stylesheets at the top of the page to ensure that Internet Explorer will display the webpage content first
6. Put Scripts at the bottom to show content to the user first and continue with the scripts loading
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External - to have them in the browser's cache.
9. Reduce DNS Lookups - this way you'll split overall loading time of the page by increasing the number of simultaneous HTTP requests.
10. Minify JavaScript - obfuscate and compress the code
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags
14. Make Ajax Cacheable:

<?
header("Expires: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time()+315360000)." GMT");
header("Cache-Control: max-age=315360000");
?>

High Performance Web Sites and YSlow

video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTHvs3V8DBA
and article:
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

Next you might be interested in optimizing your JavaScript? - here is a nice tutorial on the subject:

Efficient JavaScript from Opera software: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/efficient-javascript/

Update: here are another 20 steps which you can incorporate into your website:

Analysis and monitoring SEO tools that work for free

2008-01-13T00:03:00.000-08:00

There are lots of good tools that can be used to monitor your SEO campaign, but almost all of them must be purchased. For the people who want truly powerfull and free SEO tools I'll present my favorites:

http://www.backlinkwatch.com

Just type an URL and you can investigate your competiton by their backlinks - ie. which pages have voted for them.

Free monitor for google

http://www.cleverstat.com

Enter the keywords that you wish to be optimised, the check positions for example: 150 (which will limit the search maximum up to the 15th results page) and begin monitoring your results.
Benefits:

Compare with your previous results and determine the exact website changes that you've made resulted in a SERPS position change!
Closely monitor the rivals above you, and if you build a better page, you'll be on top.

Conclusion:
One of the most important and the same time simple truth that I've learned through the years of websites optimization is that in order to be on first positions you must deserve them.
I.e you have to represent constanlty relevant and updated information on the subject that you've been presenting/writing for - so the webpage to be really beneficial to the users.

Even most sophisticated backlink schemes won't get you on top of SERPS, when offering content of poor quality. The first pages search results and visitors stay time are being constantly monitored by real people, so next time it's better to think what could you offer to the visitors!

Take the spyware test

2008-01-09T06:32:00.000-08:00

Interactive quiz combined with follow up advices that will reveal your spyware recognition and teach you how to achieve further protection. A few questions that will rate your knowledge about the computer crime and how to avoid becoming a victim.
It's a general must read for anyone concerned about his/her own privacy.

http://onguardonline.gov/quiz/spyware_quiz.html

What antivirus people prefer in 2007

2007-12-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

Here are the results from the Your favorite antivirus poll.
The data has been gathered from the opinions of 100 unique people voting for their best used Antivirus product.

Results:
The top 3 most used AV solutions are: Kaspesky, AVG and NOD32.

Although 7% are already trying the new versions of SpywareTerminator, it seems that people are not familiar with the quality and speed of DrWeb.

Remove the spyware from your system

2007-12-18T04:54:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista users

Windows Vista comes out with the default free installation of WindowsDefender - having its own active antispyware protection. The missing branch is an antivirus solution. So here is what you can do:

Download and install a free antivirus program such as AVG anti virus from: http://free.grisoft.com/

or completely uninstall the integrated WindowsDefender and install the new version of SpywareTeminator - having a resident shield and combined with ClamAV for the viruses. This way you'll ensure a full protection on your system.

Laptop users

If your laptop gets infected here is how to restore its proper functioning:

1. Download the free utility SpywareTerminator from another computer: www.spywareterminator.com

2. Copy the application on a USB stick drive/CD and transfer it to the infected laptop.

3. Install and Run it. Press Scan-> Full Spyware Scan-> Start Scan Now. Wait a few minutes depending on the hard drive occupied space. Next check all the results found and press Remove Infections.

4. At this point your Internet connection should be restored and functioning so go to http://downloads.ewido.net/ewido_micro.exe

download the application and run the online avg/ewido scanner to remove any additional threads found.

5. Right click on SpywareTerminator taskbar icon

1) Check for updates - to download the latest program definitions

2) Check on the HIPS(host intrusion prevention system) to enable further protection of all files. HIPS may require you to do a full scan.

Remark: If during the cleaning process the computer suddenly stops or restarts, then you'll have to restart windows in safe mode and repeat the scanning. Congratulations, by now your laptop should be cleaned and ready for use.

Uninstalling AntiVirus products

When experiencing frequent problems with the antivirus software sometimes you should completely uninstall them and then going for a fresh installation. Remember that any application service left consumes pc’s memory. So here is how to do the proper clean up.

If you want to completely remove them go to command prompt: Start->Run->cmd
and then type:

net stop service_name

sc delete service_nameNote: when service_name consists of more than one word embrace it with quotes " "

Disable only: Open up Start->Run->services.msc and find the desired one. Click stop and then disable.

How to find service_name – just find the software name in the services.msc list and look at its properties (Right Click). Then under the tab General you’ll see the "Service name"

List of specific antivirus software services:

Application : Service name

A-squared Free: a2free

AVG Email scanner, Alert Manager Server & update: AVGEMS, Avg7Alrt, Avg7UpdSvc

Avira AvtiVir PersonalEdition Classic Guard & scheduler: AntivirService, AntivirScheduler

AVAST: aswUpdSw, avast! Antivirus, avast! Mail Scanner, avast! Web Scanner

SpywareTerminator Realtime Shield& ClamAV: sp_clamsrv, sp_rssrv

Symantec: SymAppCore, Symantec Core LC, ccEvtMgr, ISPwdSvc, CLTNetSnService, ccSetMgr

WindowsDefender: WinDefend

More information:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2138042,00.asp

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136205/article.html

http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,2705,1639157,00.asp

Benefits of Google's Blogsearch

2007-11-23T00:17:00.000-08:00

There are many ways of searching for information. Via the standard search the first results pages are owned by the big websites, because of their regularly updated fresh and relevant content.

But what if you want to reach a more specific and user experienced information?
Here comes the Google's blogsearch-http://blogsearch.google.com/ - searching in the updated and new blogs posts. This powerful service could help you to explore fresh websites and look further for appropriate details. It‘s also an ideal way for finding niche full with relevant information.
These are the blogs that couldn't compete with the regular websites, but the information out there is fresh and experienced from the blog owners. I was really impressed how many beautiful niche sites I've found this way.

Alternative: Google Alerts - receive an email when your "keywords" are mentioned somewhere on the web.
I've tried this service but most of the emails I've got were full with irrelevant keywords even if I tried to put them in "quotes".

Cheers!

Fixing duplicate content caused by sessions

2007-11-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in Webmastercentral blog Google duplicate content caused by URL parameters, and you

URL parameters, like session IDs or tracking IDs, cause duplicate content, because the same page is accessible through numerous URLs.

More information on the dynamic urls effect to search engines as well as how to manage them using yahoo's site explorer you can find here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/siteexplorer/dynamic/index.html

So if your CMS, blog or e-commerce has AJAX back button navigation, or just a login system with session IDs appended to the url, it causes duplicate content! The same is true for frames with tracking ids attached.

After a long searching following with a technique from webmasterworld's member JDmorgan I've succeeded to get ~90% of my website content fully spidered.

Here is how to implement this technique on practice with dynamic content using .htaccess:
Just put the following lines in your .htaccess file and test

first we allow only .html pages to be spidered

#allow only .html requests

RewriteCond %{query_string} .
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)\.html$ http://your_web_site.com/$1.html? [R=301,L]

then we remove all the sessionid parameters when a page is being called by bots

#remove URL sessionids
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Googlebot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Slurp [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} msnbot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Teoma
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(([^&]+&)+)*PHPSESSid=[0-9a-f]*&(.*)$
RewriteRule ^$ http://your_web_site.com/?%1%3 [R=301,L]

Additional information:
A chain of 301 redirects could cause you a loss of PageRank.
So please check that your 301 redirects are final i.e. they point to an end page and not to another redirect page. You can use for Firefox's LiveHTTPHeaders extension to do this kind of check.

Next you can read some more methods of escaping the sandbox: Deoptimizing - a new way of SEO

Enjoy and be welcome to share your experience!

More security on adsense

2007-11-04T01:10:00.000-07:00

If you are using Google AdSense as a revenue advertising system, then you might want to implement these security measures in order to prevent someone from displaying your adverts with a wrong purpose in mind(i.e. click frauds or placing ads code on inappropriate website)

Here are the steps to ensure that your ads are displayed on purpose:
1. Login to AdSense
2. Click on AdSense Setup tab->Allowed Sites
3. Under List your allowed URLs, one per line:
type your trusted websites that you allow ads to be running on

That's it!

Strengthen your Internet Explorer settings

2007-11-01T10:57:00.001-07:00

After the Bulgarian security researcher Dancho Danchev has discovered a network of malware affected websites: http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2007/10/portfolio-of-malware-embedded-magazines.html

here is how to further protect yourself from that kind of web exploit by disabling IFrames in Internet Explorer:

Go to Tools->Internet options->Security->Internet->click on Custom level... button then on security settings check disable Launching programs and files in an IFRAME

Read more at: http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2007/10/28/1269330.aspx

My blog and Google

2007-10-21T23:59:00.001-07:00

22.10.07
After a long fight with duplicate content issues and meta title&description uniqueness here are the results that I've found based on my blog: http://nevyan.blogspot.com

- the blog content is fully spidered, but only half of the pages are in the main Google's index. I think that some time'll have to pass before the full recrawl and indexing to occur.

Here is what I've changed to the original blogger template:
- added 'nofollow' attribute to all blog feeds and external links(blog feeds were showing in google's results, increasing the keyword density thus raising a penalty).
- removed the description fields as it's pointed in googlewebmastercentral(either have them done correctly or no at all)

"We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available)..."
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html

Using current Blogger platform with such dynamic content creation I think there's no way of writing unique meta descriptions and titles for each post. So in order to escape the duplicate title, description and h1 tags I've removed the meta description tag.
- created separate sitemap page with links to the internal blog posts. This time without 'nofollow' attribute. This way the sitemap functions as an entry to the blog posts.
- checked all the blog content to ensure that keyword density is bellow 2% - so it's not perceived as spam.
- added 'base' tag pointing to my blog's URL to ensure that search engines will know the originating post in case of content scraping.

The only think that I am worried about is the negative impact on the traffic that could have my SEO/webdesign posts on blog related on spyware.

25.10.07
I've touched a little bit the overall design. The number of indexed pages are going up and up!

How to make a LAN cable

2007-10-10T02:24:00.001-07:00

Here is one good quality video on how to make yourself a network cable. It's very practical and I hope you'll enjoy it!

and another one on network cable installation

Publish your blog using Word 2007

2007-09-29T23:04:00.001-07:00

Here is an easy way to publish your blog from your favorite editor.
Advantages: You have larger editing/designing space. Single login procedure.

Here is how to do it: Open Microsoft Word 2007 and start designing your post/article. When finished go to main menu Publish -> Blog

You'll be prompted to register Blog Account. Go to Register Now.

Then choose your blog provider from:

Windows Live Spaces
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services
Community Server
WordPress
Blogger
TypePad

Type your credentials and you are done.

Congratulations!

CSS styled forms

2007-09-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here is one simple method for styling valid XHTML form with CSS without using additional divs or paragraphs. The code is tested and works on Mozilla 2.x, Opera 9.x and Internet Explorer 7. Try it!
Preview:

The CSS part:

<style>
fieldset label{
cursor:pointer;
display:inline;
width:90px !important;
line-height:16px;
text-align:right;
}

input,textarea{
border-width:2px 1px 1px 2px;
font-size: 1em; font-weight:bold;
overflow:auto;
margin-left:5px;
}
</style>

The XHTML part:

<form>
<fieldset>
<legend>Login: </legend>
<label for="Login">Username: </label>
<input id="Login" name="login" maxlength="8" size="8" type="text" /> <br/>
<label for="Password">Password: </label>
<input id="Password" name="password" maxlength="8" size="8" type="password" /> <br/>
<input name="Submit" value="Submit" type="submit" />
</fieldset>
</form>

Frequent problems with USB flash, hard and floppy disk drives

2007-09-20T01:27:00.001-07:00

Flash drive is not recognized
Cause: This generally happens when incorrect drivers are being installed on Windows 98 or ME. Windows 2000, XP and Vista have working drivers for most of the flash manufacturers.
Solution: If you experience such problems try placing the flash drive on other machine. If there is still no result the flash drive could be damaged.

Often the problem is software based and could be solved by reformatting the drive. Unfortunately this way you’ll lose all your data. When doing this please obtain the format utility directly from the flash drive manufacturer.

If the problem is on hardware level such as malfunctioning controller or damaged memory try consulting special service technician. Be warned that the repair cost will be equal to the price of a new device. So this method is recommended only for a unique data.

Flash drive is recognized, but you don’t have an access to its contents (corrupted or protected data).
Cause: Every flash drive now has a data protection software or specific file system folders or partitions lock (NTFS, WinFS, ReiserFS, XFS).
Solution: If data reading is still impossible here are some programs that might help you: GetDataBack, R-studio, iRecover, FileScavenger, DataRestore, ZipRepair.

Hard drive is not recognized by BIOS or is recognized incorrectly
Cause: There is a possible physical damage in the chipset electronics or mechanical problems around the hdd plates and heads.
Solution: Contact qualified service technician. For those that will want to try: download PC 3000 and surf around www.hddguru.com forums.

Hard disk have bad sectors and data cannot be read from
Solution: Try to correct the bad sectors with HDD regenerator. Then use programs for logical restoration.

The Windows OS is not loading
Cause: There are logical failures that restrict the data access. Usually the problem is within the OS.
Solution: Connect the hdd as a secondary drive to a computer with working operation system and try copying data from the damaged drive. Be careful - it’s highly recommended to install antivirus software on the computer. If data loss is due to a destructive virus antivirus will stop its spreading on the new machine.

Data loss due to incident format or file deletion
Solution: Try these restore programs: Get DataBack, R-Studio 3.6, Flobo floppy bad sector repair or some of the applications listed here http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/.

No application could guarantee you fully data recovery, so do frequent archives and data backup.

USB flash drives - work advices, problems and resolutions

2007-09-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

1. Prior working with USB device check whether your USB port is correctly wired and its leading voltage. Often front panel ports are being switched incorrectly or have increased power voltages due to a low-quality power supply. In such case the USB drive could possibly damage. If you are unsure use the USB outlets on the back panel of the computer’s main board.

2. Take care of your hands static electricity before turning the flash drive on. By default flash drives have protection against such static electricity but don’t solely rely on that.

3. After finishing work before unplugging use the option for safety switching off -> (Safely Remove Hardware) on your Taskbar. This will save you lots of further lost data troubles.

4. When carrying or transporting use the drive’s original fabric package. Don’t put it on your pockets or experiment with soft wrappings that allow the USB connector to fold or dirt to go through.

5.Flash disk drive is designed for an operational data work but not for an ongoing stable archive. If you wish to have such archive better use CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW.
Flash memory could be read numerous times from, but its writing is limited. The reason: in order to do a recording one specific memory area must be deleted first. And this very area could handle only limited number of deletions.

Pros:
- over DRAM and RAM - it is power independent (when you turn the device off the content stays inside).
- over hard drives, CDs and DVDs – it has no moving parts.
That’s why the flash memory is a compact, cheap and gives relatively fast way of data access.